【Pilar Coll】

A baseball game ended in a tie,Pilar Coll which is significant because baseball games don't end in ties.

Mother Nature had other plans for the Pirates-Cubs game on Thursday night, when a downpour so unforgiving turned the game's rain delay into a rainout.

After 5 1/3 innings, the contest ended in a 1-1 tie, Major League Baseball's first in a while.

Rainout games are often replayed or made up at a later point in time, but because the Cubs have already made the playoffs — and the Pirates surely won't — canceling the game doesn't affect standings.

Tonight's game has been officially suspended & will not be made up.

MLB has deemed it a tied game. All stats from tonight will count. pic.twitter.com/YmIOsnyaxW

— Pirates (@Pirates) September 30, 2016

Many outlets have called it the first tie in MLB since 2005, when the Astros and Reds ended in a draw after seven innings.

But it's slightly more complicated than that — rules at the time forced the Astros-Reds game to be replayed from the start two days later, so the results of the tie didn't show up on either team's record, but the players' stats did.

On Feb. 16, 2007, MLB announced a change to the rule. Now, if two teams suspend a tie game, it's resumed the next time those teams meet, not replayed from the start. If there are no scheduled games left between the two teams, then it's officially considered a tie, unless the game is necessary to determine playoff-related matters. In that case, the game is replayed from the start.

The Cubs are sitting pretty and the Pirates are likely looking ahead to next year, so the only people really affected by the tie game are the fans who attended — they didn't get their money's worth.

The Pirates announced they would not make tickets eligible for exchange, because the game itself still counts.